Thierry Pfister

Thierry Pfister , born with Vincennes on December 9th, 1945, is a Journaliste, a writer and a Politician French.

Biography

Thierry Pfister is resulting from a Protestant family of Swiss origin enriched in the trade by cotton and the coffee. With a directing father of a torrefaction, it is high with Roanne in a middle-class, protesting and atheistic medium but which registers it with catechism for its cultural formation. Politically, it is impregnated by a family culture republican and anticommunist but divided between the mendesism of the children and the gaullism of the parents.

Emerging only after the War of Algeria, its political conscience directs it towards a political career. Thus, when it enters to the University of journalism of Lille (1964), it takes its chart with SFIO. In its center, its singular positions - at the same time in favor of the candidature Gaston Defferre and alliance with the PCF - do not prevent it taking the head of the studied group and from being combined with youths PCF and PSU to take the local A.G of UNEF. That is worth requests for exclusion to him but the person in charge of the Socialist Jeunesses, Pierre Mauroy, covers it. He results from it a friendship which supports its promotion with the rank of national secretary of the socialist Students and assistant national secretary of the Socialist Jeunesses (1965).

At its exit of the E.S.J. (June 1967), it is registered in doctorate with the I.F.P. of Paris but gains a purse which enables him to work one month with Europe 1. After a stay with the Quebec, it gains another purse which enables him to spend one month to the the United States within a program (Young leaders) to which takes part Gerard Carreyrou, Jean-Pierre Prévôt and Jean-Pierre Chevènement. Of return to Paris, it carries out a training course with the Monde but, this one conditioning its recruiting with the filling of its military obligations, it must carry out its service. At its exit, he works for Jean-Pierre Chevènement within the black cabinet of the minister Algérie N of energy. He spends six months thus to carry out studies. But it does not cease therefore its political activities.

Thus at the national council which follows May 68, he does not hesitate to intervene to refuse the vote of the final discharge to the direction. In the same way, as a person in charge of the students, it supports all the steps of internal restoration in a unit direction and finds at the same time founding member of CERES and CEDEP. It is however closer to the leader of this last, Pierre Mauroy, of which it writes the speeches at the time of his countryside for the first secretariat. But the failure of the congress of Issy-les-Moulineaux (July 1969) leads it to reconsider its prospects for political career. François Mitterrand, from which it comes to support the candidature for opposite course to its organization, invites it well to join its team but it prefers to make the choice of journalism.

It thus enters to the political service of the Monde with the obligation to appear more publicly. But at the end of a few months, the direction of the PS in the person of Pierre Bérégovoy obliges it to return its chart.

Recruited for its knowledge of the student and political mediums, it pays initially its attention on the extreme left at the point to draw a book in 1972 from it ( Any knowledge on the gauchism , Filipacchi). It follows then the process of Union of the Left and rebuilding of the PS. Favorable to the unit step of François Mitterrand, it is however defined as a social democrat who, attached to the bonds of the party with the movement trade unionist and mutualist, finds himself rather in the sensitivity of Pierre Mauroy. Impermeable with the Marxism, its support for the common Program is more utilitarian than ideological besides and his report/ratio with the P.C.F shows through in the work which it publishes with André Laurens on the New Communists (Stock, 1973).

Supporting with the remainder of the drafting the candidature François Mitterrand for the presidential elections of 1974, he again sees himself proposing to join the team of this last. Its refusal then reduces its relationship with the first secretary to purely professional relations. In parallel, it takes into 1976 leading responsibilities while replacing at Balland Michele Cotta with the direction for the collection “Face to face”. It publishes several works in 1977 there but that does not prevent it from going to Albin Michel to publish, on the model of the Gaullistes of Pierre Viansson-Ponté, a work on the Socialists (1977). Besides worked out starting from questionnaires sent to the leaders, this book is worth to him a total rupture of its relations with Mitterrand.

It breaks also definitively with Chevènement at the time of the renegotiations of the common Programme (be 1977) and François Mitterrand after the defeat of 1978. Michel Rocard does not spare then seems to him a man of the revival without to take it with serious and it is thus always Pierre Mauroy which it supports with the congress of Metz. It then took a certain weight within the Monde since it was opposed, as a vice-president of the company of the writers, with the prolongation of the mandate of Fauvet. Appearing then in the forefront of the future applicants to the capacity, it leaves the political service to integrate the supplement of Saturday. It is there that it is encouraged to write a virulent article on the Nouvelle Right-hand side in order to discredit Le Figaro Magazine.

But in May 1979, of the family reasons lead it to leave Le Monde. It is there that his/her friend Franz-Olivier Giesbert invites it to join Nouvel Observateur and puts it in contact with Jean Daniel. Seeking with professionnaliser the newspaper while évinçant Georges Granny, this last offers the direction of the political service to him.

Entering street of Aboukir in September 1979, it initially tends to behave like a “colonel” of the World, i.e. having the full control of its heading. But he is very quickly confronted with the interventionism of Jean Daniel which allots itself the surface of the political articles and sap his authority near journalists who, following the example Kathleen Evin, refuse to correct themselves by him. Not wishing to invest itself in the long run in the weekly magazine, it thus chooses to make the minimum and to be satisfied with it to write its papers. Those relating initially to the socialist left, he does not hesitate to describe, in its first article, Pierre Mauroy like “the 3rd man of the P.S. for 81” (October 1st, 1979).

But following a discussion with Lionel Jospin in January 1980, it ceases treating PS to stick primarily to the cover of Matignon and the Elysium. It carries out also some basic analyzes on political personnel or the New Line. But there remains attached to the executive until it is brought to cover the presidential campaign. If he denounces on this occasion the mask of liberalism giscardien. But can it is scrambled about the cover Pourquoi Mitterrand gain? (n° 846 - January 26th, 1981) and makes the decision to cease its collaboration after the elections. And, hardly the Mauroy government made up, it leaves the newspaper to join its team. It becomes thus Conseiller Prime Minister for the Communication.

Later, Thierry Pfister becomes editor at Albin Michel.

Publications

Gauchisme , 1972.
the Socialists , 1977.
Daily life in Matignon of the time of the union of the left , Paris, 1985.
Open letter with the Mitterrand Generation which goes beside its pumps , Paris, 1988.

Source

Maintenance with Thierry Pfister with François Kraus, Paris, 2004.

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